opinion
A California State University professor has made her way into the headlines for her posts on X during the Super Bowl. Melina Abdullah, who is no stranger to controversy, reflected on what she felt was the inherent racism associated with being a Taylor Swift fan.
For most big stars like Taylor Swift, any publicity, including this little so-called negative publicity, is good for the Taylor Swift brand. The more we talk about it the more it grows, and why not, this is a free country (for now) Ms. Swift has unlocked the key to stardom just as such other pioneers had done before her as Mariah Carey, Tina Turner, and Stevie Nicks.
But the comments Ms. Abdullah made on X were less about Taylor Swift or even racism than about another self-proclaimed, propaganda-producing academic elite.
Because you are racist
Melina Abdullah, a professor of Africana studies at Cal State University, wrote on X on Super Bowl Sunday:
“Why do I feel like it's a little racist to be a Taylor Swift fan?”
When one user asked why she felt this way about Taylor Swift's fans, she wrote:
“Kind of that feeling I get when there are a lot of American flags.”
There is nothing better than clarifying one statement with another ambiguous statement. How many flags make up too many?
The leap that Ms. Abdullah hopes people make with her comment on Taylor Swift's fans is that Taylor Swift is so successful and being white makes her fans inherently racist, even if just a little. But deep down, the reason Ms. Abdullah feels this way (if she actually does) is because she has chosen to see the world around her through a racist lens, and not in a minor way, but in a big way.
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Everything is racist
Later, when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl in overtime against the San Francisco 49ers, Ms. Abdullah wrote:
“Why do I feel like this was a right-wing white supremacist plot?!?!”
I think she didn't watch the game or follow football. Although the San Francisco 49ers are impressive in that they were able to force the Chiefs to overtime, they were eliminated in the Super Bowl due to a poorly executed missed field goal by Jake Moody.
She wrote in another post on X:
“People think they are attacking me by asking why I think everything is racist… I am not offended. Almost everything is racist.”
There you have it, guys. Almost everything is racist!
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Weird political science
To be fair to Ms. Abdullah, she's not the first in academia to claim that Swifties are inherently racist. In 2021, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute held a conference at which they examined the “whiteness” of Ms. Swift's fandom.
Institute ethnomusicologist Kate Galloway said of the conference:
“In addition to looking at how she deals with gender, age, and maturity, some scholars are really engaging with white politics and how that is reflected in the base of her fandom.”
Imagine for a moment that an affluent institution of higher education was holding a conference to examine the “blackness” of Beyoncé’s fanbase and how the “politics of blackness” manifests itself in her fanbase. It would rightfully cause controversy because it's ridiculous, just as studying Taylor Swift's white fan base is ridiculous.
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The truth is that colleges and universities have filled their faculty with ideologues hell-bent on injecting their poison into the young minds they pay big bucks to indoctrinate rather than educate. Ms Abdullah, who declares herself a “feminist” and “honest” on her X profile, wrote about her recent notoriety:
“Here's the thing… When fake journalists from right-wing outlets turn tweets into news, they spark actual backlash from their stupid, delusional white followers. #TaylorSwiftHasSomeRacistFans #DoublingDown”
The tweets are news because of her position in higher education, that's what it is…she wanted them to be news, that's why she wrote them. There's a Taylor Swift song that I identify with, given her tendency to hate towards those who don't look like her; She should check it out. #haters gonna hate.
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